Priceless or Worthless? The Fight for Earth’s Most Endangered Species

If some smidgen of bacterial goo was found on a faraway asteroid, it would be the discovery of the year, perhaps the century. Life on Earth would not be alone! Yet when it comes to the life that surrounds us, people can be remarkably cavalier, even downright callous: What's another frog species more or less? What's it do for us, anyways?

Indeed, many conservationists have renounced the species-saving approach to nature, instead embracing the notion that nature is best preserved when it provides people with some tangible economic benefit. Creatures that don't have an obvious utilitarian value are out of luck.

Some conservationists are fighting back. In "Priceless or Worthless?," a report issued Sept. 11 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Zoological Society of London, a desperate plea is made on behalf of Earth's 100 most threatened species -- creatures that, without direct and immediate human action, will cease to exist.

Among the menagerie of the endangered are rhinos and rats, turtles and birds, even insects and plants and fungi. These last are hardly charismatic, and not the sort of species typically associated with inspirational calls to protect life, yet they make the essential moral question all the more striking: What has a right to life?

"While the utilitarian value of nature is important, conservation goes beyond this. Do these species have a right to survive, or do we have a right to drive them to extinction?" said Jonathan Baillie, the ZSL's conservation director, in a press release.

On the following pages, Wired looks at a few of the imperiled species described in "Priceless or Worthless?" Each represents a singular form of life in the universe, and each is literally irreplaceable.

Above:

Sumatran rhino

Fewer than 250 individuals remain in the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia.

Red crested tree rat

Amsterdam albatross

Breeding only on Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean, 100 adults remain.

Image: Eric van der Vlist

Okinawa spiny rat

Nobody knows how many of these rats survive, but their population is concentrated in a borough-sized area of Okinawa.

"Each species expresses a solution to a set of very specific environmental conditions," said John Robinson, executive vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, in the report. "They allow us to turn away from our parochial needs and desires, and play on the larger stage of biological richness and variety. We owe it to ourselves, and to them, to find room on this planet for all of them.”